what's all this then

I've got a mastodon bot running at @AbsurdistAscensions@www.librepunk.club. Originally it ran on botsin.space starting in November 2021, but in February 2023 I shut that version down because the way it worked was a pain (it just mashed random words together and I had to manually review every combo). More recently (November 2024) I retooled it to use actual word lists so it can be fully automated.

As for why this bot exists at all, the idea appears to have come out of nowhere. It hasn't stopped being funny to me though

the code

#!/usr/bin/env bash

while true; do
    date # for monitoring purposes
    words="$(shuf -n 1 adjectives.txt) $(shuf -n 1 nouns.txt)" # generate a two-word phrase
    phrase="$(shuf -n 1 finally.txt)" # get a random phrase to put the words into
    phrase="${phrase//XYZ/$words}" # put the words into the phrase
    phrase="${phrase//ABC/$(< last_words.txt)}" # if it's a phrase that uses 2 sets, use the last set
    echo "$words" > last_words.txt # make current word set available as a 2nd set
    echo "$phrase" # for monitoring purposes
    ~/.local/bin/toot post --using AbsurdistAscensions@www.librepunk.club -v unlisted "$phrase" # post the dang thing
    sleep 5h
done

What is two is adjectives.txt and nouns.txt

I ripped them off from here and here. The lists are modified somewhat – all words are now capitalized, and I tried to remove words that could potentially create offensive or distasteful posts. (Curation is an ongoing process though)

What is finally.txt

It's a list of phrases that the bot can use, you can read it here.